The SKF Bearing Life Cycle

 

Help your bearing achieve its maximum service lifetime

 
Every bearing has a pre–calculated service lifetime. However, research has shown that for various reasons, not every bearing achieves it. Important stages, which have a major impact on a bearing service lifetime can be recognised during the bearing’s lifecycle. These stages are mounting and lubrication, alignment, re–lubrication, basic condition monitoring and dismounting.
 

SKF Bearings Life cycle

The maintenance challenge

 

Achieving more with less

 
The maintenance challenge
 
Today maintenance managers face a difficult task: Although their staff members are highly competent, there are often fewer of them than in the past. Consequently, each one has a larger group of machines to look after and so may not be able to follow precision maintenance practices. In addition, equipment maintenance is becoming more complicated because of ongoing technical advances, and environmental and safety laws are increasingly strict, placing more pressure on this function than ever before.

Despite all these challenges, maintenance personnel are driven by management to maximise machine uptime to increase productivity – often with a reduced budget.

 
From cost centre to profit centre
Recognising the need for supplemental resources, SKF has focused on combining its broad range of products and industry knowledge to address specific plant maintenance and reliability needs. Our goal is to help our customers manage maintenance costs more effectively to reduce cost and increase productivity.
 

The maintenance challenge 

Prevent over 60% of premature bearing failures

 
Poor fitting 16% Poor Fitting
Around 16% of all premature bearing failures are caused by poor fitting (usually brute force...) and being unaware of the availability of the correct fitting tools.Individual installations may require mechanical, hydraulic or heat application methods for correct and efficient mounting or dismounting. SKF offers a complete range of tools and equipment to make these tasks easier, quicker and more cost effective, backed up by a wealth of service engineering know-how. Professional fitting, using specialised tools and techniques, is another positive step towards achieving maximum machine uptime.
 
Poor lubrication 36% Poor Lubrication
Although 'sealed-for-life' bearings can be fitted and forgotten, some 36% of premature bearing failures are caused by incorrect specification and inadequate application of the lubricant. Inevitably, any bearing deprived of proper lubrication will fail long before its normal service lifespan. Because bearings are usually the least accessible components of machinery, neglected lubrication frequently compounds the problem. Wherever manual maintenance is not feasible, fully automatic lubrication systems can be specified by SKF for optimum lubrication. Effective lubrication, using only recommended SKF greases, tools and techniques, helps to significantly reduce downtime.
 
Contamination 14% Contamination
A bearing is a precision component that will not operate efficiently unless both the bearing and its lubricants are isolated from contamination. And, since sealed-for-life bearings in ready-greased variants account for only a small proportion of all bearings in use, at least 14% of all premature bearing failures are attributed to contamination problems. SKF has an unrivalled bearing manufacturing and design capability and can tailor sealing solutions for the most arduous operating environments.
 
Fatigue 34% Fatigue
Whenever machines are overloaded, incorrectly serviced or neglected, bearings suffer from the consequences, resulting in 34% of all premature bearing failures. Sudden or unexpected failure can be avoided, since neglected or overstressed bearings emit 'early warning' signals, which can be detected and interpreted using SKF condition monitoring equipment. The SKF range includes hand-held instruments, hard-wired systems and data management software for periodic or continuous monitoring of key operating parameters.
 

 

 

 

 

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